But that note of mine? Yes? She found an opportunity to give
it to you? That's good, very good. She's more resourceful than one would
give her credit for."

"Women often are--" remarked Davidson. The strangeness from which he had
suffered, merely because his interlocutor had carried off a girl, wore
off as the minutes went by. "There's a lot of unexpectedness about
women," he generalized with a didactic aim which seemed to miss its
mark; for the next thing Heyst said was:

"This is Mrs. Schomberg's shawl." He touched the stuff hanging over
his arm. "An Indian thing, I believe," he added, glancing at his arm
sideways.

"It isn't of particular value," said Davidson truthfully.

"Very likely. The point is that it belongs to Schomberg's wife. That
Schomberg seems to be an unconscionable ruffian--don't you think so?"

Davidson smiled faintly.

"We out here have got used to him," he said, as if excusing a universal
and guilty toleration of a manifest nuisance. "I'd hardly call him that.
I only know him as a hotel-keeper."

"I never knew him even as that--not till this time, when you were so
obliging as to take me to Sourabaya, I went to stay there from economy.
The Netherlands House is very expensive, and they expect you to bring
your own servant with you. It's a nuisance."

"Of course, of course," protested Davidson hastily.

After a short silence Heyst returned to the matter of the shawl. He
wanted to send it back to Mrs. Schomberg. He said that it might be very
awkward for her if she were unable, if asked, to produce it. This had
given him, Heyst, much uneasiness. She was terrified of Schomberg.
Apparently she had reason to be.

Davidson had remarked that, too. Which did not prevent her, he pointed
out, from making a fool of him, in a way, for the sake of a stranger.

"Oh! You know!" said Heyst. "Yes, she helped me--us."

"She told me so. I had quite a talk with her," Davidson informed him.
"Fancy anyone having a talk with Mrs. Schomberg! If I were to tell the
fellows they wouldn't believe me. How did you get round her, Heyst?
How did you think of it? Why, she looks too stupid to understand human
speech and too scared to shoo a chicken away. Oh, the women, the women!
You don't know what there may be in the quietest of them."

"She was engaged in the task of defending her position in life," said
Heyst. "It's a very respectable task."

"Is that it? I had some idea it was that," confessed Davidson.

He then